Reviews for Great Impasta

07/10/2009 - Shameful degradation of past standards
I used to be a happy customer of the restaurant, in the old Champaign location.

NOW: My friend tried a vegetable salad with tuna [not a tuna salad], as per the description. Instead of any real tuna, a couple of poor vegetables, topped with small pieces of fishy-smelling disgusting tuna TAKEN FROM A CAN. An EXPENSIVE RESTAURANT is not supposed to use 20 cents-worth ingredients.

My dish was an EXPENSIVE seafood lasagna which, again, was one of the most execrable pieces of culinary garbage I've ever eaten. The Great Impasta "masterpiece" was extremely salty, heavy on the cheap, disgusting shrimp, with little of the other seafood spelled out in the menu found in the real dish. A heavy, unsavory bechamel sauce that made me feel uneasy for the rest of the day.

I was brave and I ate, because I was hungry. My stomach didn't thank me. My friend barely touched her salad, and returned it uneaten. The staff behaved as if nothing was wrong. A lot of money for food which is literally worse than the worst fast food I've ever eaten.

When it comes to restaurant food, the rapport between high prices and execrable quality makes The Rotten Impasta a champion of bad taste, in more than one sense. Bottom line: avoid like the plague.